Site Mobile Navigation

Yoga Addict’s New Mantra: ‘Mix It Up’

I WAS an addict of ashtanga yoga for a decade. It made me strong. It made me feel superior to people who went to the gym. What it did not make me was skinny.

Ashtanga yoga is essentially the mother of vinyasa, the sweaty kind — a set series of daily poses you do abetted by a teacher “adjusting” you by, say, sitting on your back. There’s no music and little talking. It is widely believed to have been created for adolescent boys and tends to attract former drug addicts and Type A personalities; I’m the latter.

Ashtanga mirrored my professional life as I segued from journalism to writing for Hollywood. “All is coming” and “practice through the pain” are among the mantras of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, the late ashtanga guru, of the aptly named Mysore, India. Manhattan’s version of Jois is Eddie Stern of SoHo, whose studio is a modest, brightly painted loft above the restaurant L’Orange Bleue — an enchanted urban oasis with lots of fresh flowers even in the dead of winter.

It took me only a few months on the yoga studio circuit to figure out that all my favorite teachers (plus Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna) practiced with Eddie, whose name was always uttered in hushed, reverent tones. I also learned that you have to practice at least three days a week, though six were preferable (Saturdays and full or new moons were for rest), and that his students drank their own urine.

O.K., the urine part turned out not to be true, though during a pilgrimage to Mysore, I did start consuming clarified butter because it was supposed to increase flexibility. Other than that, while in India, I eschewed dairy, alcohol, meat and sugar. I went to bed around 9 p.m. to wake up energized for yoga sessions at dawn. I remember looking at my bikini-clad self in a mirror and thinking, “This yoga thing is really working out for me.”

When I got back to New York, I was more enthusiastic than ever to be practicing at Eddie’s. Now I felt like an insider. For the first time in years, I wasn’t working in an office, and practicing ashtanga was like a part-time job. By the time I walked there from my apartment in the West Village, practiced, had breakfast with a friend and walked home, half the day was gone — but I felt virtuous instead of guilty. Never mind that I’d returned to wining and dining, with renewed vigor. I felt sure that as long as I got on my mat, surrounded by all the lithe, beautiful people at Eddie’s, I would not bulge bigger than a size 8.

Whenever a friend would express doubts about just how many calories I was burning at yoga, I would scoff something like, “It’s not really about that.” As I walked by gyms with my yoga mat strapped to my back, I’d feel empathy for the human hamsters on their machines, watching TV. I was way more evolved.

Seven years later, I was engaged and living in L.A. I’d advanced to the point where I could do a handstand in the middle of the room, almost touch my head with my feet, fall gracefully into a backbend and stand up. I also felt a little ... soft around the middle. True, I had cut back to practicing three times a week because I now had a full-time job writing for a TV show. But I was also planning my wedding, and suddenly I desperately wanted to hire a personal trainer.

Photo

Credit
Leann E. Johnson

During my first training session with Alyma Dorsey, an encouraging professional beach-volleyball player, at a basic gym in the basement of my apartment building (no flowers, but plastic-foam cups around a water cooler), I bragged that I was in great shape because of yoga. Alyma was very polite about it and said I should keep practicing if it made me happy.

I woke up the day after our session barely able to walk. But soon I started getting the hang of lunges and weight lifting. On days without Alyma, I was even walking uphill very fast on the treadmill, like the hamsters I’d once scorned, while watching TV shows on my iPad.

I also had found out that two of my favorite yoga teachers were very into spinning and that the most beautiful lithe woman at Eddie’s ran almost every day.

Within two months of personal training, I lost five pounds and dropped down to around a size 6. I had more time because my yoga practice was about 90 minutes, and it takes only 45 minutes of cardio a few days a week to get results. Everything felt firmer and better.

I started lying to my L.A. yoga teacher, Loren Russo, who’d been a roommate in Mysore. I told her I was really busy with work instead of admitting to my intense, sweaty sessions with Alyma. Confused, Loren observed that I looked better than ever.

Then, as my wedding approached, a friend asked if he could bring a date: his new girlfriend, Tracy Anderson, training guru to the stars. Including Gywneth and Madonna. As a wedding present, Tracy rented out a room at the Gold’s Gym in Palm Springs and led a fitness class the day before my wedding. About a dozen of my girlfriends showed up. I managed to keep up while my yoga-enthusiast friends either snuck out or faked leg lifts in the back.

At the wedding itself, I got a lot of compliments on my newly svelte frame and cut arms. Some people even asked me for my secret. “Less yoga,” I admitted, sotto voce, with a note of sacrilege.

Now I’m practicing only about once a week, for meditation, stretching and community. Loren recently observed that I’m not nearly as flexible as I used to be, and I finally confessed that I’m really into working out with a trainer.

“I’m just trying to mix it up,” I said meekly.

Loren just smiled and said, “Great.”

I left her that day feeling the way yoga is supposed to make you feel: enlightened. If not particularly lighter.

A version of this article appears in print on November 24, 2011, on page E3 of the New York edition with the headline: Yoga Addict’s New Mantra: ‘Mix It Up’. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe